The present invention relates to an inter-line fishing rod allowing a fishline to pass through and more particularly to improvement in a fishline lead-in portion.
Heretofore, a typical fishing rod allowing a fishline to be introduced from the outside into the inside of the fishing rod has been so structured that as disclosed in Japanese Utility Model No. 3007714, for example, a plastic fishline lead-in guide fitted in the hole bored in the fishing rod has an open upper portion in order to perform smoothly the operation of guiding and passing the fishline therethrough, and both side walls for protecting a guide member made of ceramics and the like. Moreover, such a fishing rod is equipped with guide members and a fishline-receiving portion for reducing the friction of a contact portion against a fishline to be introduced from the rear side into the forward section of the fishing rod or introduced in a third direction; namely an upper or lateral direction.
As the side walls are large and heavy, and so are the guide members and the fishline-receiving portion to a degree, the fishline lead-in guide as a whole tends to become heavy.
An attempt to reduce the weight by decreasing the wall thickness of the frame body such as the side walls of the fishline lead-in guide may result in lowering its strength, thus rendering the fishline lead-in guide liable to damage. Moreover, the guide members and the fishline-receiving portion tend to be easily out of place.
Moreover, the frame body of such a fishline lead-in guide becomes complicated in structure and this causes an increase in cost since the fishline-receiving portion in addition to the guide members is installed.
The primary problem to be solved includes the presence of side walls, a plurality of guide members and a fishline-receiving portion which results in increasing weight; a decrease in strength and liability to damage in an attempt to reduce weight by decreasing the wall thickness of the frame body of a fishline lead-in guide; tendency for the guide members and the fishline-receiving portion to be easily out of place; an increase in cost as the frame body of the fishline lead-in guide becomes complicated in structure.
Japanese Utility Model Laid-Open No. 100377/1992, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 248945/1992 and Japanese Utility Model Laid-Open No. 178373/1989 disclose a structure in the vicinity of a fishline lead-in portion for introducing a fishline from the outside into a fishing rod allowing a fishline to pass through. According to the '377 and '945 publications, a hole for use in introducing a fishline is formed in the thick-walled portion of a fishing rod and a frame body or a tubular frame body having a fishline lead-in hole located outside the former hole is disposed. According to the '373 publication above, a fishline lead-in portion is arranged at the joint between the male and female ferrules of both sections of a fishing rod.
According to the '377 and '945 publications, however, the fishing rod area near the hole is reinforced since the hole for use in introducing the fishline is formed in the thick-walled portion, so that the flexural rigidity is extremely high only in this area as compared with the remainder. Consequently, only this area is not readily bent even when a load is applied to the fishing rod, which results in rendering the deflection less smooth and thus causing the fishing rod to be badly balanced. Moreover, the fishing rod is easily damaged because of the stress concentrated on the longitudinal end portion of the thick-walled portion.
According to the '373 publication, further, the coupling length tends to become greater since the fishline lead-in portion is arranged at the joint between the male and female ferrules of both sections of the fishing rod. Since the area with high flexural rigidity is long, no smooth deflection is obtained and the problem is that the strength is lowered because of the cutout structure, to say nothing of a poor deflection balance. Further, the flexural rigidity of each coupling portion is high in the case of a coupling type fishing rod allowing a fishline to pass through. The flexural rigidity of each coupling portion of the couple type fishing rod is high in addition to the fact that the flexural rigidity of the fishline lead-in portion is high tends to worsen the deflection balance of the fishing rod as a whole.
Japanese Utility Model No. 22139/1987 and Japanese Utility Model Laid-Open No. 36651/1995, for example, disclose fishline lead-in guides for fishing rods allowing fishlines to pass through. The fishline guide holes in fishline lead-in guides mentioned in those '139 and '651 publications have been defined as slots bored in the longitudinal direction of fishing rods; this is because it has been intended to deal with problems of improving fishline passableness and making the slot correspond to various angles at which the fishline is inserted in the fishing rod due to reel replacement. Notwithstanding, the problem of improving the fishline passableness is not solvable by simply providing a long fishline guide hole in the longitudinal direction of the fishing rod. Consequently, a relatively wide fishline guide hole has been contrived.
In a case where the width of the fishline guide hole is set to cover the whole length, the fishline to be guided from the fishline guide hole to the hollow portion inside the fishing rod is allowed to freely oscillate and vibrate, thus the effect of guiding the fishline is worsened. Consequently, the fishline is allowed to easily abut against the inside of the fishing rod while the fishline is being wound or released, which means an increase in the thread resistance.
When the fishline guide hole is widened, moreover, it poses a problem in that the strength of the fishing rod will be lowered. In consideration of only the strength of such a fishing rod, the width of the fishline guide hole should be decreased at the cost of making poor the fishline passability.